Pope Sylvester I
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Pope Saint Sylvester I |
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Sylvester I
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| Papacy began | 31 January 314 |
| Papacy ended | 31 December 335 |
| Predecessor | Miltiades |
| Successor | Mark |
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| Birth name | Silvester |
| Born | Sant'Angelo a Scala, Avellino [1] |
| Died | December 31, 335 (aged ??) Rome, Italy |
| Sainthood | |
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Pope Sylvester I (died 31 December 335), whose name is also spelled Silvester, was pope from 31 January, 314 to his death in 335. He succeeded Pope Miltiades. He filled the See of Rome at an important era in the history of the Catholic Church, yet very little is known of him. The accounts of his papacy preserved in the Liber Pontificalis (seventh or eighth century) contain little more than a record of the gifts said to have been conferred on the Church by Constantine I, although it does say that he was the son of a Roman named Rufinus. His feast is jubilantly celebrated as Saint Sylvester's Day among the Western Christian Churches on December 31, while Eastern Christian Churches commemorate it on January 2.
During his pontificate, the great churches founded at Rome by Constantine, e.g. the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Old St. Peter's Basilica, and several cemeterial churches, were built over the graves of martyrs.
Sylvester did not attend the First Council of Nicaea in 325, but he was represented by two legates, Vitus and Vincentius, and he approved the council's decision.
Part of the Symmachean forgeries, the Vita beati Silvestri (c. 501–508), which has been preserved in Greek and Syriac (and in Latin in the Constitutum Silvestri), is an apocryphal alleged account of a Roman council, including legends of Sylvester's close relationship with the first Christian emperor. These also appear in the Donation of Constantine.
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